3 ms·

I think a lot of people dont realise how big of a mistake Shake was. Apple acquired Shake from Nothing Real in 2002. by 2006, it was essentially dead. This wa

I think a lot of people dont realise how big of a mistake Shake was. Apple acquired Shake from Nothing Real in 2002. by 2006, it was essentially dead. This was a huge problem with the visual effects industry as it was the standard for compositing works and nothing was comparable. quickly there was a scramble for alternatives to up their game, two major players were Fusion and Nuke, with Nuke evenutally winning out.

TimTheTinker 4y ago
Shake itself was awesome, but Apple let it languish. To get an idea of how big it was: Shake was used to composite Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, King Kong, Star Wars episode 3, and MI:3, among others.
- 0xRusty 4y ago
  And hundreds if not thousands of other movies and tv shows. Shake was it. It was all there was around the late 2000's to be able to comp 2k footage in reasonable time. The void filled by its demise was so real some vfx companies panicked and bought the source code from Apple for a fee (I think it was about $100k) to maintain their own version. Luckily nuke came along by around 2010 and is now the absolute standard. I don't know of a single major vfx studio that doesn't use it for all their compositing.
  - Teever 4y ago
    Any idea what made Apple shit the bed on Shake?
    - TimTheTinker 4y ago
      Apple's MO with product acquisitions has always been to port them to MacOS if necessary, then kill off support for other platforms. In this way they hope to strengthen their own desktop platform, much like Office strengthened Windows for many years. If this MO is a non-negotiable, then Apple really made the mistake when they acquired Shake. Production studio workflows built on Shake were all Linux-based, and there was no way that was going to change, regardless of the price. Apple tried to lure then with increasingly lower prices for the MacOS version of Shake, but it had few takers, even with new features and Final Cut Pro integration. So Shake (which was still primarily a Linux product) became a liability for Apple, because continued support of it didn't align with Apple corporate's priorities -- because it wasn't really a Mac OS X product that would increase Mac OS X's platform value as long as they had to also support Linux/IRIX. Just my guesses ... there was likely significantly more nuance involved than what I detailed above.
Melatonic 4y ago
I joined the VFX grind after this so I had no idea that Nuke was not always the industry standard (obviously not counting the early days) Apple loves marketing stuff as "pro" when its really just high end consumer.
- TimTheTinker 4y ago
  A lot of Apple's stuff is pro-level. Especially now, the line between "pro" and "prosumer" is very blurred. A professional can produce professional results with any high-end tool. The question is about efficiency and the ecosystem surrounding a tool, especially how well it can integrate into a studio's larger workflows.
  - Melatonic 4y ago
    This is exactly why I think Apples stuff is NOT pro level - the end user items are high quality but the ecosystem surrounding their tools is not. Managing a fleet of MacOS laptops doesn't have a direct product from Apple to do so in an enterprise environment and they do not have back end server versions of their "pro" software to integrate with.

TimTheTinker 4y ago

Shake itself was awesome, but Apple let it languish. To get an idea of how big it was: Shake was used to composite Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, King Kong, Star Wars episode 3, and MI:3, among others.

0xRusty 4y ago
And hundreds if not thousands of other movies and tv shows. Shake was it. It was all there was around the late 2000's to be able to comp 2k footage in reasonable time. The void filled by its demise was so real some vfx companies panicked and bought the source code from Apple for a fee (I think it was about $100k) to maintain their own version. Luckily nuke came along by around 2010 and is now the absolute standard. I don't know of a single major vfx studio that doesn't use it for all their compositing.
- Teever 4y ago
  Any idea what made Apple shit the bed on Shake?
  - TimTheTinker 4y ago
    Apple's MO with product acquisitions has always been to port them to MacOS if necessary, then kill off support for other platforms. In this way they hope to strengthen their own desktop platform, much like Office strengthened Windows for many years. If this MO is a non-negotiable, then Apple really made the mistake when they acquired Shake. Production studio workflows built on Shake were all Linux-based, and there was no way that was going to change, regardless of the price. Apple tried to lure then with increasingly lower prices for the MacOS version of Shake, but it had few takers, even with new features and Final Cut Pro integration. So Shake (which was still primarily a Linux product) became a liability for Apple, because continued support of it didn't align with Apple corporate's priorities -- because it wasn't really a Mac OS X product that would increase Mac OS X's platform value as long as they had to also support Linux/IRIX. Just my guesses ... there was likely significantly more nuance involved than what I detailed above.

Melatonic 4y ago

I joined the VFX grind after this so I had no idea that Nuke was not always the industry standard (obviously not counting the early days) Apple loves marketing stuff as "pro" when its really just high end consumer.

TimTheTinker 4y ago
A lot of Apple's stuff is pro-level. Especially now, the line between "pro" and "prosumer" is very blurred. A professional can produce professional results with any high-end tool. The question is about efficiency and the ecosystem surrounding a tool, especially how well it can integrate into a studio's larger workflows.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  This is exactly why I think Apples stuff is NOT pro level - the end user items are high quality but the ecosystem surrounding their tools is not. Managing a fleet of MacOS laptops doesn't have a direct product from Apple to do so in an enterprise environment and they do not have back end server versions of their "pro" software to integrate with.